CORE--NEUROPHYSIOLOGY

DESCRIPTION: This Core provides Center investigators with equipment and laboratory space to record and assess normal and abnormal sensory, motor, and cognitive function in human subjects, and in behaving or anesthetized experimental animals. It supports 17 projects of 15 investigators in the Center. The Core has two major subdivisions. The Human Neurophysiology Unit consists of five well equipped laboratories that include acoustically isolated rooms for auditory system testing in normal children and those with language deficits. The Experimental Neurophysiology Laboratories are well equipped for measuring peripheral nerve conduction velocities, electroretinogram?s (ERGs), surface and intracranial event-related potentials (ERPs), single and multiple extracellular unit potentials, and performing current-source density analysis using multi-electrode microprobes. The Experimental Unit includes AAALAC approved preparatory, surgery, and recovery areas. In addition, the Core has telemetry equipment for monitoring and recording evoked potentials and EEGs in clinical subjects and experimental animals. Recently the Core has extended the use of the experimental animal facilities to projects involved in functional assessment of genetically altered mice generated to study lipid storage diseases and myelination disorders.